


Timestamp: I Tatt-do

by CaseyStar



Series: Dogtags [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Bottom Danny "Danno" Williams, Dorks in Love, Established Relationship, Fleet Week, Fluff and Smut, Freddie is a good bro, M/M, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Reunion Sex, Romance, Smut, Tattoos, steve is still an active SEAL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 11:29:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24968995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaseyStar/pseuds/CaseyStar
Summary: Nearly a decade into their relationship, Steve and Danny are still going strong despite all the long deployments and keeping  their relationship secret.  It's Fleet Week 2010 and Danny has flown back to the East Coast to get to spend a few days with Steve after a year apart.After disembarking, Steve and Freddie get drunk and wind up in a tattoo parlour.  Ink is gotten, pledges are made, sex is had.  Not quite in that order.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Series: Dogtags [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807150
Comments: 23
Kudos: 132





	Timestamp: I Tatt-do

"You better come get your boy."

Danny groaned at the sing-song voice on the other end of the line and covered his face with his free hand.

Originally, Danny had been relieved that Freddie knew about them. Grateful, even. That Steve wasn’t having to keep such a huge secret from his best friend, the closest thing he truly had to a brother. He knew that before he’d come along, Steve had been so desperately lonely, and that the Hart family had essentially adopted him. Steve had been a regular at Hart family gatherings, especially when the thought of another long-haul flight home to Hawaii was too much for him to bear. As their relationship had repaired after years of strain following John sending Steve to Annapolis, the senior McGarrett would even join them. Keeping that he was in love from his brother would have killed Steve, if he’d had to do it. And he would have, Danny knew. Not to protect his own career, but to protect Freddie’s in case they were ever discovered.

Freddie, for all he appeared to be an over-grown frat boy, had figured it out within ten seconds of meeting Danny and seeing them together. Apparently the giveaway had been that they’d barely touched each other; he knew Steve too well, and knew what he looked like when he was restraining himself, when he dearly _wanted_ to touch and wasn’t allowing himself. Sure, he’d never seen it within the bounds of the object of Steve’s affection being a man, but he knew the signs. His face had split into the widest, happiest, sunniest smile that Danny had ever seen and he’d winked at them both. He’d followed Danny to the bar when he’d offered to buy the next round, grabbed him by the arm and hustled him off into a dark corner, scoffing at Danny’s protestations that he wasn’t that sort of boy. Danny had learned a new level of respect for SEALs that night because if he’d not been a mouthy little shit from Jersey, he was pretty sure he’d have been five seconds from pissing himself when he’d gotten a look at Freddie’s face when he’d been pushed into the wall, one arm across his throat, lifting him slightly from the ground so his whole weight was being suspended from Freddie’s arm, cutting off his air. The SEAL had gotten in his face, all traces of the easy-going guy that Danny had laughed with not moments earlier stripped away and replaced by the most terrifying mask, Freddie’s eyes boring into his own. 

Then, just as quickly, the pressure on his windpipe had eased, though not released, and a little warmth had returned to Freddie’s eyes.

_“You love my boy?” He’d asked, little more than a whisper._

_“Ye-ah.” It had been a struggle to speak around the iron bar masquerading as a forearm across his throat._

_“You gonna treat him right?”_

_Danny’s response had been little more than a croak with a hopefully affirmative edge._

_“Gonna hurt him? Tank his career if this goes South?” Danny had been able to breathe out a ‘no’._

_“Okay then!” The smile had returned and Danny’s feet had been returned to Earth. As he’d collapsed forward with a hacking cough, Freddie had pat him on the back hard enough to almost send him sprawling._

_“I’ll buy you a beer.”_

_“You’ll buy me several, you fuckhead.”_

_“I like you, Danny-boy.”_

_“Jury’s still out on you, buddy.”_

In the years since they’d met, however, Danny had periodically had cause to reconsider his decision to not punch Freddie in the face for nearly killing him when they’d met. Apparently tonight was going to be one of those times.

He was back on the East Coast, the land of seasonal weather and perfect pizza and, most importantly, not a single coconut in sight, and for the next few hours until Steve was free of his ship, he was meant to be enjoying his vacation. If Danny happened to schedule his annual vacation home to visit family to coincide with Fleet Week the years Steve was aboard the Enterprise, well, that was nobody's business but his.

Steve was also his business, and seemingly his business was, as ever, up to no good. Which, even for him, was impressive, because according to the clock, Steve shouldn’t even be stepping foot on land for another hour or two. 

The first few years of their relationship Danny had seethed with envy at the hoards crowding the dock waiting for the sailors to disembark, free to hold and kiss and reunite with their loved one in the open. But he’d learned to appreciate the time they had together rather than wasting half of it pissed off and in turn taking it out on Steve.

"Huh?" Danny had been well on his way to working on a food coma while he waited; one thing Bridget took seriously was cooking and goddamn was she good at a welcome home feast. Sure, maybe she’d brought ‘round enough for a small army so Danny could feed ‘ _his sailor boy to keep up his strength’_ which Danny had valiantly ignored, and maybe Danny had gorged himself just a little out of nothing else to do because the hotel he’d been able to afford didn’t have a gym to work out his frustrations in and no fucking way on _Earth_ was Danny reuniting with Steve in his parent’s house with the little gym his dad had set up in the garage.

Hotels were practically built for loud, athletic, and shame-free sex. His old bedroom with its creaking twin bed and common wall with his parent’s room? Not so much. No matter how open his family was, there was such a thing as a line and no matter what Steve said, even the Williams family knew it.

"We might have been released a little early to sponsor some event being the good little officers we are, and there might have been some drinks bought for us ‘ _brave boys’_ by a few grateful citizens, and uh-" there was a rustle, some shouting and Steve's distant, distinctly un-sober, voice calling out " _it's gonna be awesome_ ".

"Please don’t tell me you're being a cliché?" The headache that only seemed to plague him when Steve was Stateside, the one that sat _right_ behind his left eye and felt like someone was stabbing a trident into his skull, began to make itself known.

"He's twatted and getting tatted."

Danny lurched upright so fast he almost threw up, a sharp pain radiating down his right side, an imminent stitch having the decency to warn him that more pain could be provided at a moment’s notice if he didn’t lie back down and allow digesting to continue in peace, please and thank you.

"You’ve spent too much time with the SAS, y'know that? I do not approve of joint operations that result in you both bringing home fucking annoying slang."

"Just get here, brah."

*

Trust Steve to have found the sketchiest looking tattoo parlour in all of New York. Which was saying something really. Danny had never felt the urge himself except during a few teenage rebellion moments that spontaneously coincided with every time his dad called tattoos classless and common, but he had had to drag Matt out of one when he was only 16 but had gotten his hands on the world’s worst fake ID. But even sixteen year old moronic Matty would have passed on the place that Danny now found himself in front of.

The buzz of the gun was a distant hum when he pushed the door open and stepped inside. Against all odds, the place was even worse inside than he’d expected. The cramped reception was barren save for a scarred counter over which blinked the bright red light of what Danny was sure was a fake CCTV camera. As he made his way across the space, Danny was shocked his feet didn’t stick to the floor and was supremely glad for the dim lighting, certain that he didn’t want any greater knowledge of the terrifying array of piercings and assorted body modifications that were revealed to line the wall behind the counter. 

In Danny’s opinion, tattoo parlours should smell reassuringly of Pledge and antiseptic. The reek of _clean._ Like a hospital. The room he now stood in smelled the very opposite of clean. If impending hepatitis infection had an odour, Danny was pretty sure he’d just found it. He wondered if he should alert Yankee Candle as he shoved his hands into his pockets, resolving to touch nothing.

The buzzing of the gun was starting to grate on his nerves as he stood there wondering what to do next. Surely you had to be drunk to endure that droning for any length of time.

“Anyone alive in here?” He yelled, wanting to get the ordeal over and done with. 

Seconds later Freddie's face peered around a doorway from about halfway down a dark hallway behind the counter. From his bright smile and glazed eyes Steve wasn’t the only drunk in the place.

"Oh Danny Boy, the SEALs the SEALS are caaa—aaa—lling, from Jersey Shore and down to Brooklyn Heights. The Navy’s here and all the girls come ru-uning. It’s you…" His eyes crossed with the effort of creating more lyrics and he ran out of steam. For which Danny was almost grateful enough to begin to believe in God and miracles.

“Is that Danny?”

There was a commotion in the room Freddie was leaning out of and the hum stopped as Danny made his way down the hall, careful not to brush up against anything.

“You gotta stay still, dude.” Danny instantly disliked the voice of someone he didn’t recognise.

Peering under the arm that Freddie was propping himself up with on the doorway, Danny could just make out the smudge of ink that stretched across Steve’s back. From what he could see, the damn thing was _huge._ No subtlety, that was Steve’s problem.

“Why didn't you call me sooner?" He hissed at Freddie, gesturing to where the seemingly nearly-completed art spanned nearly the entire width of Steve's lower back, and was a good six inches high. It was obvious that the work had been going on for far longer than the thirty minutes it had taken him to find the place.

"It's not my fault!" Freddie raised his hands, looking for all the world like a child caught with his hands in the cookie jar. His loud belch ruined the innocent vibe he was trying to muster. 

Swallowing down the half-digested food that was valiantly trying to make a reappearance at the wretched odour – some horrific blend of tequila and something he didn’t want to think about - - Danny tried to sidle past the idiot and failed; his lover’s best friend and fellow SEAL, was an absolute mountain of a man. He was, at 6’2”, only an inch taller than Steve yet somehow managed to loom over even him, and his shoulders took up the entire doorway he was standing in.

“What the fuck do they feed you people?” Groused Danny as he tried to push past, Freddie not even having the decency to flinch when he really had to put his weight behind the shove to move the gigantic putz out of the way. He could have scraped past him, but really, not touching anything in the place was high on his list of priorities.

“Danno!”

Their eyes met as Danny crossed into the room and Steve's smile at seeing Danny was huge, all teeth and gums and it was moments like that, when Steve's joy at seeing was so unabashed, so unrestrained that had Danny falling in love with the oversized goof all over again.

Even if he was currently smiling up at him from a prone position on a bed in the sketchiest tattoo parlour known to man.

He was so fucking lucky he was pretty.

Even now, after years together, the sight of Steve made Danny’s heart skip a beat. It didn’t matter if the man had been away for a year or had only left the room a minute before, he always managed to make Danny’s knees weak. 

Even when blitzed out of his mind.

Danny was pretty sure that it was the alcohol that had Steve’s eyes shining the way they did, bright and glittering as he gazed at Danny, but the romantic in him liked to believe that it was his arrival that had caused it.

What could he say, he’d gotten really good at denial over the years.

“What the fuck were you drinking? Ethanol?” From the overwhelming reek of alcohol in the room he was pretty certain alcohol was leeching from Steve’s pores. But hey, maybe it would lessen the chance of infection because no way on Earth was it the smell of anyone in the place having disinfected anything. Possibly ever. Steve’s blood was surely 75% alcohol going by the look of him, and the smell, and that would probably kill off any bacteria unwise enough to enter his bloodstream.

Or just kill Steve. Assuming Danny didn’t first.

"If this is what you do on night one, babe, I'm a little concerned about what you're gonna be up to by Friday."

Steve was laid out on his belly, shirtless, the broad expanse of his back as mouth-wateringly hot as it was the year previous, the last time he’d seen it. He also had his pants snuggled below his ass, the glorious globes revealed to the not inconsiderable, if Danny were any judge and he _was_ , interest of the tattooist.

Danny wasn’t proud of the jealousy he felt about how Steve's ass was exposed to the gaze of everyone in the parlour, nor how the artist's free hand just happened to be resting on one pert pale globe, no doubt for ‘stability’ but a man for touching your boyfriend was _not_ grounds for shooting them in the face.

He’d checked.

He knew it was irrational; Steve loved him. Only him. Was risking his _entire_ career to be with him. He knew that being naked in front of another meant nothing to Steve. Knew that Steve had zero sense of shame and was the least body shy person he had ever met, used to zero privacy and parading around naked and showering around others. Freddie, when he stayed with them, had had to be trained to at least put on boxers outside his room because Danny liked his furniture god damn it, except when super hungover. For Steve, nudity just wasn’t a sexual thing with anyone but Danny. He _knew_ he was the only one allowed to touch, but _fuck_ it had been a year and the first person to get their hands on that glorious ass should have been _him._

But that wasn’t even the worst of it. 

The guy was _marking_ Steve.

Marking Steve in a way that Danny never could. Danny had never been super into PDA but the odd peck on the cheek of the person he loved or even holding their hand while out was something he’d enjoyed. With Steve, he had the freedom to do neither. They couldn’t even be seen to go out on a date. If they were to ever get to it, Steve couldn’t wear a ring; it was neither legal nor would he be allowed to serve even if it were. The marks of Danny’s mouth and hands faded in days and even if he left them, he knew Steve would have to lie about who left them when the rest of his team inevitably asked about the wildcat he was bedding. 

But there was a complete stranger etching a permanent reminder of his existence onto Steve and Danny couldn't even stake a claim. It was so obvious, even drunk off his ass, that Steve was military, and would have been even if he weren’t in his Whites and oh _fuck_ Danny had forgotten how deeply unsexy that uniform was.

It was like a walking Tide commercial.

Given how much Steve, and his buddies bitched about the difficulties of keeping their Whites clean - to the point many had devised ways of not having to wear the damn things, and it was amazing how many sailors would oddly be taking liberty during heritage days when the whites were required - Danny was surprised he hadn't stripped off completely to avoid getting ink or blood on the garment. Surprised but glad because arresting himself for the murder of the artist for ogling naked Steve would be tricky and embarrassing.

“What, with all due respect, the fucking _hell_ is the matter with you, Steven?”

“Huh?” Steve did not look adorable when he was confused, he absolutely did _not._ “Why are you yelling at me?”

“I’m not yelling at you. I’m asking a question. A perfectly reasonable question, I might add, given our current, charming, locale.” Danny spared a glance at the artist. “No offence.” He didn’t really care if the guy was offended or not because he’d have to be utterly deluded to not know where he worked, but he _was_ being trusted to permanently alter his lover’s body and Danny didn’t want any retribution being something he’d have to look at every time he took Steve from behind.

Which he guessed wouldn’t’ be any time that week given how long tattoos took to heal and the new one’s location.

He turned back to Steve. “I’m asking you, what the ever loving fuck you think you are you doing?”

He was either too drunk to feel the pain or was getting off on it, but Steve looked positively _thrilled_ to be a human pincushion. “What does it look like, brah?” 

Oh God, he really was hammered if he was slipping back into the slang of his home. Danny shot a dark glower at him. If he wasn’t putting up with that shit in their home on Oahu, he _certainly_ wasn’t letting it happen on the sane coast.

Danny squinted at the design that was being etched permanently into his lover's skin, trying not to let his gaze linger below his waist to the pale skin he covetously thought of as his alone. Clearly Steve had had some time, wherever he'd been, to strut around shirtless to maintain his golden tan because if anyone could get naked in a warzone it was Steve McGarrett.

It was nothing like Steve's other tattoos, the ones his mouth and fingers had worshipped and memorized. The new tattoo was stark, almost brutal in the way it arched across his skin, the edges sharp and blade-like, nothing like the art that Danny had spent hours tasting.

He didn't like it. Danny had kissed that skin. Sucked the shape of his mouth into it. Tasted it. Come over it. He knew every inch. Every freckle and scar. Now…now it wasn’t his anymore. 

There was something cold and cruel about it. Too...it looked too much like a weapon, like that was all Steve was. But it wasn't his body, no matter the claims he made to Steve that the Navy only rented him from Danny. 

He supposed he was just grateful to have Steve back, rather than for the tattoo to be a bone frog crawling up Freddie’s arm.

"Uh...it _looks_ like you’re getting that Klingon blade thingy on your back." Danny had been all about Magnum, and CHiPs as a kid, but Matty, Matty was all about the Star Wars and Star Trek and later, even Stargate.

Nerd.

"A Bat'leth," the artist supplied, not looking up from where he was wiping away what looked like excess ink and _blood_. Didn’t Steve bleed enough already? Why did he have to volunteer to exsanguinate over this guy’s table?

"Sure," Danny shrugged.

"It's tribal," Freddie opined and then thrust his arm under Danny nose, nearly breaking it.

"This is mine," he said proudly. "Good, huh?"

When Danny’s eyes were able to focus on the too-close skin, he was able to take in the details of Freddie’s new artwork. A couple inches above his wrist on the inside of his forearm sat what was easily the most stereotypical ‘ _drunk sailor on leave’_ tattoo it was his dishonour to view; a red heart with a banner across it, complete with the name of Freddie’s girlfriend, a couple of flowers peeking out on diagonal corners.

“Ain’t it great?”

“It’s…something, alright.”

“I’m not much of a ring girl,” Freddie said with significance, but all Danny could do was frown in confusion, a near constant state for many when around Freddie Hart.

"We're celebrating!" Steve hollered much to the annoyance of the artist when he punched the air, moving his canvas.

"Kelly and me, we’re getting hitched tomorrow and we’re having a kid!"

Danny silently agreed with the whispered " _Oh, God_ ," of the artist. Freddie was a good guy, a golden retriever in human form for all that he was a highly trained killer, but the idea of him fathering and caring for an infant? Truly terrifying. Kelly was obviously a better person than him. Then again, she’d been with Freddie for nearly a decade now, and loved the overgrown puppy so clearly she wasn’t the sanest person he’d ever met.

Not that he could throw stones in _that_ particular glasshouse.

He fought down the reflexive envy at Freddie being able to openly love Kelly, being able to start a family. Danny had wanted to be a father since he was old enough to understand the concept, but then he'd met Steve and children had been something he'd tucked away in a little box inside his heart, contenting himself on being the best uncle the world had ever seen.

“Doesn’t Kelly have two Ls?” Danny asked instead of giving into the familiar pang that the thought of babies always brought, smirking when the SEAL instantly looked down to check, panicked.

“That’s what I said,” Steve crowed, holding out a hand for a high-five and pouting when Danny smacked it away.

“You guys are assholes. But you can’t ruin this for me.”

“Wouldn’t want to, man. Wouldn’t want to.”

“It’s a girl,” Freddie continued, chest puffed out proudly. “Didn’t wanna tell anyone until Kelly was past the first thingy, y’know.”

“Trimester?”

“Yeah. I got a book and everything.” Freddie produced a shiny new copy of ‘ _What to Expect When You’re Expecting’_ from somewhere that didn’t bear thinking about. “Gotta learn to be a good dad, right? My old man…he isn’t a bad guy but I wanna do better for her.” Danny had met Freddie’s dad a couple times, and the guy was so laconic he made Steve look a chatterbox. Warm and cuddly he was not. 

“Congrats, man. Really. You guys will be great. Kelly in town?” Danny had missed her the last month she’d been visiting family back home in Indiana. Though he supposed he knew why she’d had that spur of the moment decision now. He and Kelly had grown close in the couple years since Freddie had been stationed at Pearl-Hickam, often commiserating long into the night over their obviously terrible taste in men. From what he’d seen over that time, she and Freddie had an explosive, often illogical, love, unable to be apart but often driving each other crazy.

Danny hoped their marriage had what it took to survive the SEALs. He was more than aware of the 90% divorce rate and that, especially given the secret nature of their relationship, that he and Steve had lasted as long as they had was a practical miracle. Of all the men in his team that were married, none were on their first and the rest were divorced at least once.

Loving a SEAL was not for the faint of heart.

“Thanks, bud. Not ‘til tomorrow.” 

Danny couldn’t _wait_ to see the woman’s face when she got a load of what her own idiot had done. Danny wasn’t going to be the only one stuck in love with a moron bearing terrible artwork. Misery loved company, after all.

“Told Steve that he was gonna go down next.”

“Excuse me?”

“His thing, _y’know_ ,” Freddie probably thought he was being covert as he waved his be-tattooed arm between Danny and Steve but when you were a giant in a small room there was no such thing as subtle, “it’s the real deal. Don’t want him messing it up and letting it slip through his fingers.”

“Roger that,” Steve stated with conviction, gaze boring into Danny’s. His voice, still a little loose and a bit slurred, was firm. “I will _not_ mess it up.”

“’Cos there is nothing better than this, man.”

“I can think of one thing,” Steve mumbled. “Changing dirty diapers.”

“I’ll get back to you on that.”

During their talk, Danny’s eyes rarely left Steve, roving from where the stark design was inching across that beautiful back to his gorgeous eyes. Steve was struggling to focus on Danny but as he and Freddie had talked, something in them had changed, growing darker, hotter as he stared at Danny. There was a fondness there, but it was rapidly receding behind a lust that a blind man would have seen and Danny was infinitely grateful that the artist was so focussed on his work.

Speaking of…

“What the hell is your problem?” Danny asked the man as he took a break to swipe a cloth through the blood and ink that sat on Steve’s skin.

“Huh?”

“Huh? What do you mean, ‘ _huh?’_ They’re fucking drunk.”

“Trollied,” agreed Freddie with what was the worst English accent Danny had heard since his ex.

“Yeah, that.”

“Smashed.”

“That too.”

“Rat-arsed.”

“Freddie, if you don’t shut up I’m gonna give you such a beatin’.”

It shouldn’t have worked, Freddie could have wiped the floor with Danny with one arm tied behind his back – and the few times they’d trained together had been mortifying for Danny who despite being a serious scrapper was severely outclassed by the SEALs in his life – but the giant slumped against the wall, risking catching God-alone-knew-what and mimed, with drunken care, zipping his mouth shut.

Yeah, that’d last.

“As my idiotic friends have demonstrated, they’re well over the event horizon of intoxicated.”

“Yeah?”

“So, what the fuck?!”

“Huh?”

“Huh? Huh? Say huh one more time, I fucking dare you.”

The guy blinked at him, seemingly at a loss in the face of both Jersey cordiality and the lack of being able to use what possibly was the only word in his vocabulary.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“He’s giving me my celebration tattoo,” Steve offered, taking advantage of the lack of work being done to twist around and try and grab at Danny.

“Shut up, I’ll get to you later.”

Over by the wall, Freddie giggled. “Ooooh, you’re in troooouuubbbbbllllllle.”

“Danno’s mad,” Steve giggled. A horrific sound to come from a SEAL, Danny was sure. To look at the two men right now, the fact they were two of the world’s most highly trained and lethal individuals, sent in to topple governments or rescue hostages would not be obvious. Danny wouldn’t trust them with his niece’s Bubble Gun Shooter let alone an M4.

“Real mad, bro. Gonna have to make it up to him.”

“Shhhhhhh!” Steve clumsily held up a finger and shushed his best friend before, thankfully, mouthing ‘ _it’s a secret’_ at his friend.

“Children, you’re tattooing children.”

“It’s my discretion, right?” The artist pointed at a sign on the opposite wall that stated just that. “Besides, they served our country, I can serve them right?”

“And that Fleet Week is a huge boom for your business if all the squids spread the word that you’ll ink them no matter how blasted they are, that’s just coincidence, right?” Danny’s hand reflexively moved to where his badge…wasn’t clipped to his belt. It wasn’t even like he had jurisdiction anyway, but damn it, it would have been entertaining to put the fear of God in the man.

“Huh?”

Steve wrenched around and grabbed Danny’s wrist, tugging him up towards his head and away from the artist, well aware that the hissed intake of breath was the precursor to one _hell_ of a right hook. He’d been on the receiving end of it once and he did not recommend the experience.

“Danny, Danno, don’t be mad. C’mere, c’mere.” Steve pulled on his lover until he came to stand by his head. Checking over his shoulder that the artist had gone back to work once Steve was still, and that his body was blocking the action, Danny lovingly brushed back the hair from Steve’s forehead. It was unusually long for the SEAL, suggesting he’d been deep in-country awhile before being lifted to the Enterprise and, knowing Danny’s preference for longer hair, hadn’t submitted it yet to the buzzcut he habitually kept during deployment. He probably had returned to his ship with a Paul Bunyun beard to match and Danny was ridiculously grateful that Steve had the wherewithal to shave it. Beard burn was not high on his list of favoured sensations; the last time Steve had eaten him out while full-mountain man it had felt like his ass had been sand blasted and he'd barely been able to sit for three days.

Danny’s heart clenched with fondness for the goof, cupping his hand around one freshly-shaven cheek when Steve butted his head into his hold.

“Hey,” he whispered, barely audible over the gun.

Steve grinned up at him, gummy and wide and a man trained to kill with his bare hands shouldn’t have been able to look so innocent and sweet. To his horror, he felt a flush colouring his cheeks to be his lover’s sole attention.

Somehow, perhaps out of self-preservation so he didn’t go crazy missing Steve while he was deployed, he had forgotten just how fucking attractive his partner was.

"Don't think this is what your training was meant for, buddy."  
  
Now Danny was touching him, one large hand wrapped around Steve’s wrist where the artist couldn’t see, Steve had resumed remaining perfectly still. Not a twitch of the powerful muscles that ran the length of his gorgeous back, despite what Danny was sure was an abundance of pain.

"SERE has many applications," Freddie offered, head bowed over his book an appalled expression on his face. Danny had been privy to far too many graphic discussions by his sisters during their pregnancies to dare ask what he was reading about. He would have been happy to go to his grave _without_ being informed, complete with photographs, what an episiotomy was.

"The most important school the Navy will ever send you to." Steve sounded like he was quoting someone.

"Still don't think this is what they meant."

Freddie blew a raspberry. "Please, like having a tattoo hurts. After Maine in January there’s nothing I can’t endure."

“Tell me that again after a week of fatherhood.”

“Hell Week got me prepped for that, brother.”

“Hell Week had an end. And a bell.”

Freddie made another unimpressed sound and turned the page. “Didn’t ring it then, not gonna ring it now.” He waved off Danny’s comments.

“Hey, did you know he could read?” Danny asked Steve, laughing when Freddie flipped him off.

*

It was another hour before Steve was deemed finished, during which the artist nearly managed to talk himself into being punched in the face again by asking Danny if he were military too, much to the hooting amusement of both SEALs.

‘ _Do I look like an insane person? Do I seem as though I have taken leave of my senses? Like someone that rocks a_ buzzcut? _No, I do not, because I am sporting a nice fade here, that I paid good money not to have disrespected and am indeed in possession of all my faculties._ ’

_“I was only trying to make conversation, man.”_

_“Stick to the day job.”_

The artist had, in what Danny was sure to be an uncharacteristic display of self-preservation, done just that, continuing his work in silence as Steve and Danny had talked to each other, Freddie occasionally chiming in with whatever horrifying pregnancy fact he’d just learned. Danny filled Steve in on the inconsequential minutiae of his day to day life that Steve had missed over the last year: the new guy at the department that thought leaving tanning oil on Danny’s desk every day was the height of humour – it was expensive shit so Danny just let him do it and gave the bottles to Clara much to his mother’s delight; the work Danny and John had made on the Marquis – not a lot; and Kamekona’s latest business venture, a shrimp truck which had Steve very interested. Danny didn’t assume for a moment that the SEAL would remember a word of it in the morning but with every word, every comment in response from Steve, Danny felt his soul lighten, his heart knit back together after months without the other man’s presence.

He had come to terms over the years with the notion that Steve could _not_ return the gesture, that what he could tell Danny of his time away would be vague, situations mentioned obliquely if at all. The new scars he would no doubt find littered across Steve’s skin would tell him more.

And re-break his heart.

Finally the gun had gone silent, the artist had swiped off the last of the blood and excess ink and smeared an antiseptic ointment across the artwork. He’d handed, to Danny because Steve was busy trying to see the finished tattoo in the floor length mirror that leant against one wall and Freddie was making unhelpful comments about how ‘ _cool’_ it was, a list of instructions on aftercare and, Steve having paid upfront, shown them the door. Which had been shut, in Danny’s mind, unnecessarily aggressively behind them.

Steve had stood shivering without a shirt on regardless of regs, aware even in his drunken state that he could still easily stain his Whites while Danny had fetched the car, his sister’s minivan which Freddie had made one too many comments about until he’d been reminded that hot rods were soon to be a thing of his past and he better get used to looking like a soccer mom.

“This thing better not ruin my sex life because if I don’t even get to have my hands all over that ass at all this week because you got drunk, so help me Steven, I will kill you. The power of my sexual frustration will kill you. And I will _not_ be sorry. Do you hear me? I will not regret it.”

All Danny got was a snore from the backseat.

He glanced at the digital clock and glowered at the readout, all too aware of Steve’s curfew and pathetically grateful that as an officer it was 1am and not 11pm or he he’d have been screwed.

Or not, as the case may be.

He was all too aware of how desperately finite their time over the next few days was. Despite having sponsored an event that day, Danny knew Steve would have to do another the next. That had come as an annoying shock to Danny their first week together; Fleet Week wasn't a true break for the guys and gals aboard ship. They had duty every three days, and even on their ‘off’ days they had to sponsor an event. That included shit like attending a late night talk show so the host could pretend to give a shit for the "brave men and women of our military" for the ten seconds the camera panned over the little group of Dixie-cupped sailors.

It really ate into his ‘ _fucking and getting fucked blind’_ time. He didn’t even get to sleep a night through next to Steve and wake up in his arms. Sappy as it sounded, there were nights when he was alone when he’d have committed murder most willingly for the privilege of waking in Steve’s arms. The SEAL took up most of the bed, sprawling across it and Danny with a possessive ease and while he’d never admit it out loud, and certainly not to Steve, Danny found waking in the iron grip of Steve’s hold made him feel wanted, like Steve was terrified someone would try to take Danny in the night.

But sacrifices had to be made, that had been clear when what had started as a one-night stand had blossomed into more.

For example, Freddie, sprawled across backseat and Steve alike, was also going to be a near constant companion; apparently the Navy was a big believer in the buddy system. Ostensibly Danny figured it was meant to ensure they kept each other out of trouble, but from what Danny had seen over the years, more often than not the pairs just egged each other on, regardless of how they were ‘ _representing the Navy at all times while wearing their whites’._

New tattoos being Exhibits A and B, their current blood alcohol levels Exhibit C.

Catching Danny’s gaze, Freddie grinned, wide and more than a little lewd.

“Shame the arse antlers aren’t handles, huh, Williams? Then you could really show your boy who’s boss.”

Danny didn’t even know _how_ to respond to that beyond a disgusted look in the rear-view.

 _Definitely_ no more joint ops with UK forces. Clearly they were a terrible influence.

*

With a grunt, Freddie deposited his cargo, face first, onto the bed that took up the majority of Danny’s motel room before disappearing with a wave over his shoulder and Danny’s express instructions to fuck precisely zero shit up. Shore-leave buddies weren’t supposed to split up, but there was a bar next to the motel and Danny wasn’t about to spring for Freddie to have a room of his own for a few hours. He had his pride. And limited funds. But mostly pride.

“I know it’s not the Hilton or anything, but it’s got a bed and a decent shower.” Which in Danny’s opinion made it far superior to the rack and head that Steve had access to normally so he wasn’t gonna be listening to any complaints. Steve made a living getting shot out a boomer, his opinion was thus rendered worthless in the world of sane people.

A snort, muffled by blankets, met his words.

“Great,” he groused, “there goes my plans.”

“Pla?” Steve mumbled into the incredibly questionable comforter.

“Sex, Steven. Sex. Making love if you’re feeling fancy, fucking if you’re not. After that, I was planning on more sex. And then, if I can get it up, even _more_ fucking.”

Steve’s one visible eye opened and struggled to focus on Danny past the nest of blankets that he’d inadvertently found himself in. “Roma-ce ‘s ded.”

Taking in the pathetic tableau in front of him, Danny nodded wryly. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

Steve just flapped a hand weakly at him before snuggling one of the thin pillows under his head with every sign of heading to sleep.

Grabbing the room key, Danny patted his pocket to check for his wallet and the list of items the tattooist had deemed necessary, and headed out.

*

Steve wasn’t in the bed when Danny returned from the bodega down the street, a little bag of the recommended products to treat the tattoo plus a fistful of the largest waterproof bandages they’d stocked, in hand. It wasn’t what he’d _planned_ on having to run out and buy in desperation but hey, as long as he didn’t get the lube and the antiseptic cream mixed up, he figured they were good.

“Steve?” He threw the bag onto the bed and knocked on the ajar bathroom door.

“Yeah?” Steve sounded more alert, voice echoing a little due to the tiled room. “C’mon in.”

“You taking a piss? Because there’s a line. A line decent people, _normal_ people if you will, draw in the sand when in a relationship and mine is being just fine not witnessing you hitting the head.”

“Oh fer – just come in, Danny.”

Bracing himself for what he might find on the other side of the door, Danny did just that and instantly had to school his features into a neutral expression and not allow the bark of hysterical laugh that threatened to burst forth out.

Steve was one of the least flexible people Danny had ever met. Not just mentally or emotionally- though he had the dubious honour of being reigning champion in both those categories and likely would be into eternity- but physically as well. He'd watched the SEAL try yoga and nearly herniated something trying not to laugh.

Steve had just tried not to herniate anything full stop.

So watching him trying to twist and rotate and spin around in front of the mirror to get another look at his new artwork under better lighting than the parlour had offered was nearly entertaining enough to make up for the shitty car ride.

Not the sexless reunion, however.

  
“What are you doing?”

“Trying to see it.” The ever present dog tags hung around Steve's neck, twins to the ones that were around Danny’s neck branding the detective as his, swung against Steve’s chest as he changed directions, twisting his head around to strain to see over his shoulder, as though spinning the other way would allow him to sneak up on the tattoo, like a puppy chasing its own tail.

Which Danny did not find adorable in the slightest.

“You chose to get it permanently etched into your skin and you don’t know what it looks like?”

Steve shot Danny a dark look in the mirror, though it was somewhat marred by the still drunken flush to his cheeks.

“Of course I _know_ what it looks like.”

“Then why the Dorothy Hamill impression?”

“Who?”

Sometimes Danny forgot that Steve had been raised by the military which, in the detective’s mind, was synonymous with being under a rock all his life. “Ask Mary next time you talk to her.”

“Why would Mary know? Did she babysit us?” Steve’s confused frown was not adorable, it was _not._ Drunken SEALs that get fucking ugly tattoos permanently etched into their skin on the one week of sex Danny was going to get for the foreseeable future were _not_ adorable. They were irritating and annoying and reckless and… _naked_.

So very, deliciously, naked.

It had somehow slipped Danny’s attention that Steve had shed the rest of his uniform on his way to the bathroom and now all the gorgeous tanned real estate that was Danny’s alone – fuck you Navy, he’d planted the Williams flag on that ass – was on display and with the door locked and the curtains closed, Danny was safe to glut himself on the view.

But before he could give in to the desire to touch, Danny forced down his lust and focused on his habitual check of Steve's body. He noted each new scar, the marks still pink and pale against his golden tan. He catalogued the fading bruises on his chest and ribs, hidden during the tattooing. Absently his cop brain differentiated bullet wound from knife, boot from club. He'd long since stopped asking about them, not wasting their limited time together with Steve's sad face as he repeated the frustrating non-answer of _'classified'_ or worse the dead-eyed _'I neither confirm nor deny_.'

That didn't stop his heart breaking at every mark and hurt.

He supposed, if he really stopped to think about it for a minute, that was what the tattoos were about; scars that Steve chose, which Danny could understand. Even if the latest one only missed out on being a tramp stamp by dint of its size, spanning from hip to hip as it did. Truly, it would have been the envy of every over-tanned, gum-cracking club-hopping girl of the Shore. And now it was on his lover. Permanently.

Although, now he could see it properly it arrowed into Steve’s crack, like a guiding map to Steve’s hole. Which had possibilities…

“That thing better not ruin my sex life, McGarrett.” Danny figured it bared repeating seeing as how Steve had rudely slept through his entire earlier rant in the car.

In the mirror, Steve narrowed his eyes, but the glower was mitigated by the alcohol flush to his skin that was matched by the heat in his gaze, eyes roving over Danny’s form. Turning on his heel, he rested back on the sink, hip cocked against the marble as he made no bones of slowly checking Danny out, making a show of biting down onto his plump lower lip as he did. 

“It feel ruined, Danno?” He asked.

“Doesn’t really feel anything,” Danny goaded, lifting his chin and squaring his shoulders, heart racing as Steve pushed himself off the sink with an entirely unnecessary, but appreciated, hip thrust in response.

“Can’t have that.”

Danny had a list of Steve’s many and varied faces, and really how the man hadn’t lost his shirt any time he played cards was a mystery because outside of SEAL mode, poker face was not one on the list.

Currently adorning Steve was wearing the detective’s favourite expression – Reunion Sex Face. Steve’s eyes would narrow, locking on to the target in question, a little furrow appearing between his brows. The left side of his mouth would twist up in a confident grin _just_ the right side of a leer. It was unbearably cocky, yet it was a look that never failed to cause Danny’s heart to race and his dick to twitch.

Danny felt a fleeting kinship with prey as Steve _stalked_ across the room until he towered over Danny, uncaring of his nude state. Reaching over Danny’s shoulder, Steve shoved the bathroom door closed, shutting out a cold and judgemental world, and finally, _finally,_ Danny was in Steve’s arms.

Steve raised one hand to Danny’s face, sweetly brushing the backs of his fingers along his cheek as he gazed down into Danny’s wide blue eyes, his touch in direct contrast to his expression. Danny wrapped his arms around Steve’s shoulders and held him tight. He turned his face into Steve’s neck and inhaled deeply. Beneath the bitter tang of alcohol, Steve smelled familiar and _warm,_ subtle spice and cheap soap and somehow an ever-present hint of salt that Danny suspected was embedded in Steve’s skin.

That was always the moment that made it real for Danny.

Steve was home and safe and _his._

For the next few hours at least.

He loved the feel of Steve’s body against his, so solid and warm, the unrelenting, reassuring strength of his arms as they wound around shoulders and waist. Most of all, he liked the way that Steve’s fingers would, even when the man was sated and sleepy, even when kissing was the whole goal and not just a step on the way to sex, let his fingers slip under Danny’s shirt to stroke across his lower back, just revelling in their closeness. 

Oh, how he’d missed it.

Danny was a tactile guy, and holding or being held was one of his favourite parts of being in a relationship. The back slaps from the odd colleague that tolerated him, the tight hug from Amy after weekly dinner with Meka’s family, and the occasional pat on the shoulder from his ‘father in law’ just weren’t enough for him.

As though acting on their own desires, Danny’s hands smoothed up into Steve’s hair and tugged him down. Their lips met, sliding together with ease, as though the couple had never been apart. Steve’s hands came round to grip Danny’s hips, holding him in place as he traced the tip of his tongue along Danny’s cupid bow, feeling the shiver that travelled through his lover at the touch. Sliding his arms around Danny’s back, Steve splayed one large hand across the expanse of his lower back, the other moving further to south to grasp Danny’s ass in a possessive grip. 

Danny lost himself in their kiss, long, slow effortless slides of lip against lip, melding into biting kisses that were so deep they might never separate. He loved them all, and it soothed his soul and set his blood aflame at the same time. They kissed as though they would die if they stopped, as if to remove their hands from the other was a crime rather than the other way around.

They stayed like that for several minutes, lips and tongues exploring, hands gripping tight as they reacquainted themselves, until Danny, at least because SEAL lung capacity was not overexaggerated, needed to breathe. Danny could feel the telling heat and weight of Steve’s cock against his hip but the SEAL didn’t push, didn’t rush, just met him kiss for kiss, revelling in their closeness. 

As Danny pulled back, Steve buried his face into Danny’s neck breathing in deep lungfuls of his lover’s scent as he kissed and nipped along the exposed skin. Moaning softly, Danny obliged him by letting his head fall to the side, the hand in Steve’s hair kneading and releasing in time with the rhythm of Steve’s mouth on his neck, encouraging the SEALs dedicated efforts to mark him.

“Yours,” he murmured. “All yours, babe.”

“Mine.” The agreement was practically a purr, dark and dangerous and it sent shivers down Danny’s spine with the promise it held. The slick heat of Steve’s mouth was a shock when he sucked Danny’s earlobe between his lips before nipping it.

Using his grip on the dark hair, Danny yanked Steve’s head back until they could see eye to eye. “And you’re _mine_ ,” he snarled, a dark thrill clenching at his balls at the thought that for once he could mark Steve just as he himself was being marked; the SEAL would practically be expected to return to the Big E with a hickey or two, otherwise what was the point of shore leave?

“Yeah, Danno, all yours.”

“Don’t forget it,” Danny grumbled to cover his delight at the words, at Steve’s easy agreement. He buried his nose against Steve’s neck, snuffling over the skin, tongue snaking out for the odd taste as he chose his spot. The tickle of breath against his neck made Steve laugh, the sound breaking into a moan when Danny latched onto his collarbone and sucked a fresh mark onto his skin.

Steve’s hands cupped Danny’s hips, fingers worming beneath clothes to refamiliarize himself with the curve of bone and cut of muscle with a razor sharp devotion as he grinned down at his lover.

“You were jealous.”

“I was not.”

“I know you like marking me. Getting me all _filthy._ And that guy had his hands on me.” Danny’s hands, resting where they belonged on Steve’s hips, tightened at the memory.

“Yeah,” Steve’s tone was unbearably smug, “I _knew_ you were jealous.”

“Shut up. You’re drunk, you barely know your own name.”

“McGarret, Steven Jack.”

“Fuck off.”

“Rather fuck you.” Steve grasped Danny’s hand and held it to his crotch, the cock beneath Danny’s palm stiffening further. The alcohol wasn’t going to be a problem then.

“You’re drunk,” Danny reiterated.

“Horny is what I am.”

“I can tell that, babe.” Danny gave the cock in his palm a friendly squeeze, unable to stop himself despite his concerns about Steve’s state. It hardened further in his grasp. “But also, drunk.”

“Buzzed,” came the correction as Steve thrust into Danny’s loose hold, hand reaching down to keep Danny from withdrawing. “Frustrated.”

“Welcome to my life.”

Steve grunted and glared at Danny through narrow eyes. The detective had the good grace to shrug in apology. He knew he was lucky; he had the comfort and privacy of their home, _their bed_ , in which to jerk off to what always started out after every deployment as outrageously complex fantasies involving multiple uniform changes and impossible positions, but that would swiftly devolve over time into just thoughts of Steve naked and _present_. In contrast, Steve had no privacy and no time, just a desperate session in the shower or trying to be quiet in the barracks and catching hell the next morning when he wasn’t stealthy enough.

“Y’know what’s so great about tattoos? What makes them so addictive?”

“The cover-up and/or removal work it necessitates down the road helps to stimulate the economy which makes the inked idiot feel better about drunken mistakes?”

“The adrenaline. All those endorphins. You can feel it, feel _them_ racing through your blood and you gotta burn ‘em off. Been half-hard ever since the needle first touched my skin.” Steve’s giant hands came up to frame Danny’s face, rough and demanding as he kissed him.

Over a year. It’d been more than a year since Danny had had that mouth on his, that taste across his tongue.

How had he survived?

How had he woken every morning knowing the other side of the bed would be cold and empty? How had he returned home each night to a home devoid of light? How had he known that even when he _could_ speak to Steve, they could never truly say anything?

Then Steve’s hands smoothed up into his hair, blunt nails sending shivers down his spine and he knew how. Because all that time waiting, was spent waiting for _this._

_For Steve._

The insane, demanding, _selfless_ man that was finally back in his arms. For the worshipful way the man would touch him, not as though he believed Danny to be delicate, but as though he were precious, something to be adored.

Which went both ways.

Danny ran his fingers reverently along the chain adorning Steve’s neck even in his nudity, the pad of his thumb tracing the warm metal. He felt Steve swallow where his palm rested on his throat.

“Danny.” Steve’s eyes were hooded and dark, his chest heaving against Danny’s. Bending his head, Danny kissed the tags. Perhaps if he pressed his lips hard enough against them, Steve’s name would be permanently embossed upon him.

He glanced up at Steve, still holding the tags against his lips. “You sure you’re not too drunk for whatever it is you’ve got in mind? You’re recent history suggests your decision making to be subpar and I don’t wanna take advantage.”

“And what do you think I have in mind, Detective?” Steve cocked one brow.

Oh, Danny could play that game too.

“Me on my knees, you balls deep in me, riding me hard and fast.”

It was almost always the way their reunions went, a hurried and desperate fuck that took the edge off and let the next round last longer. Every time they were reunited they always intended to take things slow, reacquaint themselves with each other and their bodies, and every time they steamrolled over those intentions, too desperate for each other for sweet, or slow, or romantic.

That could come later.

At the flare of lust in Steve’s eyes, Danny couldn’t stop himself from dragging Steve’s mouth to his, his lips soft and gentle, a startling contrast with how his tongue was staging an aggressive siege upon Steve’s mouth. Hardly idle, Steve rocked his hips gently, bringing his cock against Danny’s. The hand that kneaded the delicious swell of Danny’s ass followed the seam of the jeans up to the waistband, nimble fingers slipping beneath to tease soft skin as it moved around to work on the buttons. Danny felt the pressure over his hardening cock lessen as Steve undid his jeans, the slow ‘ _snick, snick, snick’_ of the zipper being lowered barely audible over Steve victorious grunt into Danny’s mouth as the fastenings finally succumbed to his artless yanks and it was the work of a shimmy for the jeans to fall from Danny’s hips. 

As the detective shifted his weight to step free of the fabric pooling around his ankles, Steve exploited his distraction, both hands dropping under the plump swell of his ass to grip his upper thighs and lift him onto the sink.

Danny absolutely did _not_ squeak in surprise. _If_ he made a noise it was one of concern as to the cool of the marble and the unsexiness of haemorrhoids, that is all. But the marble felt cool and almost soothing against the flushed heat of Danny’s ass, a perfect contrast to the slick-hot skin of Steve’s chest against his.

“Not a girl,” he growled biting down a little too harshly on Steve’s lower lip in punishment, rehashing a familiar argument whenever Steve indulged his love of lifting or carrying his lover.

“You don’t say,” Steve drawled, sucking his lip and releasing it oh so slowly, just to watch Danny’s eyes cross. Steve’s gaze bored into his own, dark and unblinking. Hungry.

With a roll of his eyes, Danny let Steve muscle his way between his knees, urging his love to step close, eyes closing on a sigh as their cocks bumped and brushed, the SEAL gathering both shafts into his wide palm for a couple of strokes before tugging at the hem of Danny’s shirt.

“Off.”

“Oooh, monosyllabic already, I am good.”

“You ever shut up?” Steve tugged again.

“Under very specific circumstances.” Danny grasped the bottom of his tee and tugged it over his head, throwing it away over Steve’s shoulder where it landed somewhere in the shower. He suspected, from Steve’s smirk, that the static – thanks for fucking nothing Downy – had left his hair ruffled, but before he could reach up to fix it, Steve leaned in close, brushing their noses together, nudging his against Danny’s, playful and sweet before he drew back.

For a heartbeat, Steve just stared at him in silence, gaze blazing hot as his eyes roved over Danny’s broad shoulders and narrow waist, the thick pelt of hair that covered nearly every inch of his chest and stomach, over peaked nipples and flat belly. He dropped a surprisingly soft kiss to Danny’s shoulder considering the lust that flared in his eyes.

“You look so good like this,” Steve murmured, running his palms up Danny’s sides, cock twitching against Danny’s ass, eager to bury itself in the safe harbour that Danny offered. He slipped a hand over the ridge of a hip and swiftly over to Danny’s groin, between his legs down to the curve of his ass, reverent, a teasing touch as he stroked questing fingers over Danny’s hole and up over his ball, tracing the seam of delicate skin. “So very good,” he said again, watching as Danny shivered and flexed under his touch.

Danny cupped his jaw, lifting his head from where Steve’s eyes were glued to Danny’s cock, and brushed back the hair from his forehead to press a kiss to the furrow between Steve’s brows, smoothing it out with his lips. Steve tipped his head back, inviting a kiss on his lips, which Danny readily bestowed.

“Just tell me what you want, babe,” Steve whispered, low and urgent as his fingers traced circles around Danny’s hole, the touch dry and electrifying, and Danny’s breath hitched. “Tell me what you want and I’ll do everything in my power to give it to you.”

He would too, that much Danny knew and it made his heart clench. Anything Danny asked for, _anything_ , Steve would turn himself inside out to lay it at Danny’s feet. His eyes slipped closed and he swallowed, hard, as Steve nuzzled against his temple, breath ruffling his hair. 

So desperately did he want to answer ‘ _I want you to quit. Come home. Be with me. Do anything other than this calling that keeps us apart.’_ But he couldn’t. Steve wouldn’t be the man he was, the man Danny loved, without his bravery, his selflessness, his too big heart that wanted to protect the world, and too-broad shoulders that tried to carry it.

Instead, keeping his eyes closed, he reached for Steve’s hands, those calloused gentle hands, and drew them up to his chest, pressing his own over top. 

He wants _everything_. He wants the feel of Steve over him, pressing him down until it feels like they’re one body. He wants to feel Steve atop him, watch his powerful thighs flexing as Steve rode him, cock snug in Danny’s grip as he brings Steve pleasure. He wants Steve’s hands all over him, in him, around him. He wants them both exhausted and wrung-out, fuck drunk and panting.

He wants _Steve._

“Just be with me. I want to watch your face as you come inside me.” 

Steve’s fingers brushed against peaked nipples, crisp hair tickling against his palms as he skimmed one hand up to Danny’s neck, his lover’s hand shifting to wrap loosely around Steve’s wrist as he was pulled in for another kiss, bare chest to bare chest.

Lips slid softly against each other as Steve pressed kiss after kiss to Danny’s mouth, a soft murmuring of words following each peck, words Danny couldn’t really decipher but were of little consequence in the end. He understood their meaning well.

_I’m here._

_I love you._

_I’m will always do everything in my power to come home to you._

Danny thought he was prepared for the feel of their heated skin pressing together, but when Steve shifted closer and aligned their bodies from shoulder to hip, he had to bite back a moan at the perfect slide of soft skin and coarse hair, their twin tags pressing and rubbing against each other.

“Doing okay there?” Steve teased, far too smug and self-satisfied for Danny’s liking so he retaliated by raking his nails down Steve’s chest over nipples and abs alike. Steve bucked into the cradle of Danny’s hips which was delightful as far as Danny was concerned, as was the way that Steve arched into his touch, pushing his chest into Danny’s hands, trembling.

“Want you,” Danny grunted as his hands skimmed over Steve’s chest, cataloguing the new scars, learning their texture and shape with his fingertips, adding them to the map in his head. He leant up and traced what he suspected was a knife wound that had been inflicted dangerously close to Steve’s heart, tracing it with his tongue, convinced the skin tasted different, newer, less _Steve_. While he was nearby, he swirled his tongue around the nipple before kissing a trail across the broad chest to the large bruise that took up much of Steve’s right chest wall, the edges already yellowing, healing progressing nicely. He pressed soft kisses over the damaged flesh.

A hand cupped his chin, lifting his lips from Steve’s skin.

“I’m okay,” he promised earnestly.

“Hmph,” Danny grumbled but dropped it, lifting his chin further to request a kiss. A request that Steve easily granted.

Both hands migrated to Danny’s hair, stroking and tugging at the strands as Steve’s lips played at Danny’s mouth, at times teasing and soft, others invading and biting. For his part, Danny gave into the desire he’d had to run his hands across all of the skin earlier exposed in the parlour, the astonishingly sleek skin of Steve’s back, covering the corded muscles of his back and arms. His fingertips sought the subtle ridge where skin met ink over magnificent delts. He idly wondered if, once it had healed, he’d learn the same for the new ink.

That it would likely be another six months before he got to determine it was a reality he ruthless pushed to the back of his mind. Instead, he focused on how, when Steve took him on his back, Danny liked to wrap his legs around Steve’ s waist, cup his hands on his hips and guide the pace, pulling his lover’s cock into him harder and faster, never not demanding.

With the new tattoo, he wouldn’t be able to do that. Instead he’d have to fill his palms with Steve’s tight ass. What a shame. Speaking of, it had been a while since he and it had been acquainted. A damn long while.

At the feel of Danny’s hands clasping his ass, pulling the cheeks apart to allow the cool of the air to kiss his hole and then pushing them together again, causing a faint sting as the bottom edge of his tattoo was stretched, Steve’s grip in Danny’s hair tightened. He tugged Danny’s head back to take his mouth deep, utterly possessing, until Danny could do nothing more than moan into his the kiss, hands clawing at Steve’s ass to pull him impossibly closer, fingers dipping into Steve’s crack to toy with his hole.

The rhythm of Steve’s hips stuttered and his hands travelled down Danny’s body, skimming over nipple and hip, tracing the shallow well of his belly button before running his fingers lightly along Danny’s rigid cock, thumbing at the wetness that leaked steadily from the head. Biting at Steve’s mouth, Danny’s knees began to tighten on Steve’s hips before aborting the move, instead his calves wrapping around the back of powerful thighs, digging his heels into the solid muscle, trying to encourage Steve’s hips back into motion, for him to step close once more, for the SEAL to take them both in hand once more.

In a usage that was definitely not what the Navy had had in mind with SERE training, Steve easily broke Danny’s hold and stepped back.

“The fuck, McGarrett?!” Hands grappling for purchase slid over the sensitive skin of his tattoo but it only made Steve shiver, nerves so raw they could no longer determine pleasure from pain. It was all too tempting to give into Danny’s attempts to draw him back in to the cradle of his thighs, but he had something he wanted even more than Danny’s hands on him and when he put his mind to it, he could be as slippery as his namesake and he slid out of Danny’s clutches, a smirk on his lips.

“Oh, so you _don’t_ want to be sucked? ‘Cos I gotta tell you, us Navy fellas, we got a reputation for being full service.”

“Just put your mouth to better use, Lieutenant Commander.”

“Sir, yes, Sir.”

Falling gracelessly to his knees, Steve shifted his hands, hot and rough, to the soft skin of Danny’s inner thighs, splaying them indecently wide, before hooking behind his knees and tugging Danny forward until his ass barely balanced on the edge of the sink, the blond’s core burning with the effort of holding himself upright.

Muscling between his legs, Steve guided Danny’s legs over his shoulders and looked up the length of Steve’s quivering stomach, over pebbled nipples flushed red with arousal, greedily drinking in the blush that stained his cheeks, the wild disarray of his hair.

Which was nothing on the crazed look in his eyes, pupil blow, lids heavy.

He was a goddamn breathing sin and Steve was gladly going to Hell.

Kissing along the satin smooth skin of Danny’s thigh, he stroked his hands from knee to hip and back again, delighting in the feel of the hairs against his palms and the solid muscle of his lover’s thick thighs. Danny might have been a shorter man, but he was solidly built, compact and thick in a way that mean he could never be mistaken for a woman, no matter how many snide comments the pair overheard from some of Danny’s colleagues at HPD.

Steve caressed Danny’s balls, letting their heavy weight puddle in his palm, rolling the sensitive flesh over the his fingers until Danny was moaning, hips making aborted little thrusts into Steve’s hold. Untouched, his cock leaked steadily against his belly and the SEAL couldn’t wait any longer to get his mouth on it.

Shuffling forward on his knees, Steve pressed his face into Danny’s groin, hauling in deep open mouthed breaths, lips brushing against the stretched skin of Danny’s perineum a he nosed at furred balls, inhaling the heady scent of his lover’s arousal. Flattening his tongue, Steve pressed it to Danny’s hole and drew a moist line of heat from hole to the tip of the flushed cock, dropping a kiss to the head. Looking up through his eyelashes, Steve locked eyes with Danny as he slowly, and with every sign of enjoyment, lapped away the pearl of pre-come that was left behind.

“Yeeeees,” Danny breathed, head smacking into the mirror at the feel of Steve’s lips and tongue moving over him, the occasional flash of teeth, gentle but shocking, sucking kisses here, licks there, a thumb swiping over the leaking slit to smear the slick around the flared head.

“Please, please _…please._ ” One of Danny’s hands released its death-grip on the edge of the sink and grasped the back of Steve’s neck with what was, if anything, an even tighter grip. But he didn’t pull of push him around. Instead Danny’s fingers played with the fine hairs at the base of his skull stroking along the overheated skin, soothing and soft for all it set goosebumps down Steve’s back.

Steve turned his face, letting Danny’s hand slide over his cheek until he could press a kiss to the palm, glancing up at Danny as he did so. He rubbed and bumped his head against Danny’s hand until the detective obliged and shifted his grip to cradle the back of Steve’s skull, fingers buried in the thick dark hair as Steve lowered his lips to Danny’s cock.

When Steve’s mouth finally closed over the head, the fingers in his hair clenched, the sting sending shivers rippling over his skin as he took Danny apart with his mouth. Danny watched, enraptured and wide-eyed, as his cock was slowly engulfed, the length disappearing between Steve’s lips, sliding across his tongue.

God it was good, so _fucking_ good. Steve’s mouth was burning hot, the rasp of his tongue the perfect counterpoint to the sleek suction of his cheeks, and Danny couldn’t help but let his body drop back against the mirror, not giving a shit about the tap digging into his lower back. He couldn’t stop himself from moving his hand, from running a thumb over those beautiful sharp cheekbones, down to where Steve’s cheeks hollowed around his cock as he sucked. Steve shifted his head to the side, letting the head of Danny’s cock bulge against the man’s fingers, the dual sensation exquisite. Danny pressed his fingers more firmly against the bulge and shivered at the feel of the slide of his cock within Steve’s mouth as his lover drew back, only to suck him deep again, deep into his throat, swallowing around the length.

It was a little sloppy, unpractised, and the dark, possessive part of Danny’s soul thrilled at the fact. He’d been out with Steve, he knew just how persistent Frog Hogs could be, more than one refusing to take no for an answer and being three seconds away from being arrested for sexual harassment. He had never had a single concern that Steve would cheat, it wasn’t in the man’s nature, but to have actual proof that his trust, so abused by a previous lover, was well-placed here, that Steve clearly hadn’t blown anyone since the last time he’d been home…?

He wasn’t proud of it, but goddamn did it please him.

As did the look on Steve’s face when his lover pulled back but didn’t release him, his face barely leaving Danny’s groin. His eyes were wide and dark, hungry as they met Danny’s gaze, his lips so swollen and red – so _used_ , Danny’s brain helpfully provided – and a flush was spreading over his cheeks. Danny knew, _knew,_ that if he had the strength to sit upright, he’d be able to look down those ridiculous abs and get a good look at Steve’s magnificent cock which, from the movement of Steve’s shoulder, was getting a little attention.

Which was Danny’s job, damn it.

“Steve,” he grit out, and the SEAL smiled around the shaft splitting his lips; he could feel the frustration vibrating through his lover as he swallowed him down again only to draw back and away, leaving Danny’s cock leaking against his belly, twitching in the cool air after the heat of his mouth. 

“Daniel,” he replied with a laugh as Danny pulled on his hair.

“Up, up, up, up! C’mon, _Steven_!” Danny scowled as he was denied instant satisfaction, Steve having to extricate himself from the legs over his shoulders without accidentally pulling Danny from the edge and having to make an incredibly embarrassing call to Freddie for help. 

Danny’s stomach twitched and trembled as Steve’s mouth dragged over his abs, tongue laving over the abundant hair that covered Danny’s chest and arrowed in a thick line down the centre of the belly, swirling his tongue around and dipping into the well of Danny’s navel to watch him jump in surprise, and resume tugging Steve to his feet before he took ruthless advantage of just how ticklish Danny could be.

As soon as Steve had regained his feet, Danny dragged him close once more and reached out for his cock, slick and hard and oh-so-hot as it filled his palm. As his hand took up the familiar rhythm he knew his lover favoured – tight, twisting strokes - Danny stared at Steve's face, greedy for his every flicker of pleasure and happiness. He hoarded every moan, every hitched breath, every heavy-lidded smile for the dark, lonely nights that would be his once more in only a few day’s time. 

Tightening his thighs around Steve’s waist to steady himself before rewrapping his calves around Steve’s knees, Danny lifted his other hand from the counter, trusting Steve, even lost in pleasure, not to let him fall. He stroked over Steve’s chest, beads of sweat bursting beneath his palm as he cupped one defined pec, the nipple peaking at his touch. He’d never get enough of Steve’s chest; broad, muscled, with a fine dusting of dark hair that arrowed thin down his belly, and those perfect nipples. They were small and so mouth wateringly dark all the time, flushing only ever more red with arousal when Danny got his hands on them. 

Which he did now, watching through half-closed eyes as Steve’s hips began to rock into his hand, elegant back arched, Danny rewarding him by smoothing his palm over the head to slick his grip, letting him move his hand faster along the shaft. The SEAL’s breaths, the annoying box breathing he did when he was trying to hold on to control, fell away and he began to pant, open mouthed and desperate.

God, how Danny loved that moment. _Lived_ for that moment. When the pleasure Danny could bestow was so great that all the discipline, all the training became meaningless and SEAL became man. The moment when Lieutenant Commander McGarrett fell away, and all that was left was Steve. 

_Danny’s_ Steve.

It was the most powerful feeling in the world and Danny knew he would never tire of it.

Continuing to thrust into Danny’s hand, Steve tipped his head forward, kissing Danny deeply. Reaching up, Steve cradled the side of Danny’s face. “This what you want, babe? Wanna watch what you do to me? Have me come all over you? Or you still want me in you?”

“The only place you’re coming is inside me.”

Releasing his hold on Steve’s cock, Danny groped around on the sink until he found his DOPP kit and rummaged around inside it until he found what he wanted, offering the items to Steve.

Keeping hold of the lube, Steve dropped the condom next to Danny’s hip for later. One day they weren’t going to need it, but until then, while they were sexually exclusive, they were both in professions that involved far too great a risk of ending the day wearing other people’s blood, sweat, and other unmentionable bodily fluids.

Danny, in particular, resented the latex, thin though it was. He’d never had unprotected sex, not even as a stupid teenager fumbling through losing his virginity, first to Sarah Wilson’s hand and then holding it together enough to get inside her for sixteen of the most glorious seconds of his young life. 

Likely not hers though.

Then he’d met Steve. Steve who he loved more than life itself, with whom he was going to spend the rest of his life. Steve that he wanted to share himself with that way. But the risk was too great, especially when Steve couldn’t even be honest about what countries he’d recently been in, let alone what might or might not have happened to him there.

With a shake of his head, Danny took a moment to drag himself back to the present. He had to leave the future to fend for itself, according to the self-help seminars his mother kept dragging him to. He only had Steve for such a short stretch of time each leave, and he wasn’t going to waste a moment of it wishing for things that couldn’t be.

Yet.

“Are you gonna get on with it anytime soon?”

“In a minute,” Steve grunted as he shifted Danny around on the counter, dragging his mouth along the coarse stubble of Danny’s jaw, nipping at the skin when Danny huffed in annoyance.

“This better take longer than a minute,” he grumbled irritably, even though he was a little concerned that after so long without the heat of another person, he’d go off like a virginal teenager. He’d never hear the end of it.

One sloppy finger circled the tight furl of Danny’s hole, Steve’s other hand clamping onto Danny’s hip to keep him stable as the detective’s hips jerked forward violently at the touch. 

“Shhhh,” Steve soothed, stroking along the firm muscle of Danny’s thigh.

“Not a horse,” Danny retorted, his hips still rocking into the massaging tease of Steve’s finger.

“Really?” The hand on his thigh trailed over to grasp Danny’s cock, squeezing it tight. “You sure about that? Coulda fooled me.”

“Flattery, Smooth Dog?”

“It working?”

“Keep it up, I’ll let you know.”

“Oh, I’ll keep it up, babe.”

Danny’s upper lip curled in disgust at the poor innuendo.

“How did you ever get laid before me? How?”

“Same way I got you.”

“Ohh,” Danny nodded. “They lowered their stand- _ards!”_ The last syllable was punched out of him as Steve’s finger breached him, slow but unrelenting as Steve’s thumb massaged Danny’s perineum. He used Danny’s grunts to guide his movements, faster when Danny sighed, slowed when he hissed.

“Sorry, what were you saying?”

“Asshole.”

“Not even gonna touch that. Unlike _this.”_ The tendons and muscles in his forearm flexed in a manner just as distracting as the sensation of his agile finger rubbing against his walls and nudging against his prostate. Forearms should _not_ be so sexy, Danny was damn sure of that. They never had been before Steve and the detective was sure that it was only because his sex life was all desert and monsoon and back again that he was a little concerned that just a peek at Steve’s hairy forearm was enough to get him hard. Which was mildly infuriating and something Steve should answer for.

“Huh…I thought you Army boys were meant to be good at this.”

His reward for his impertinence was a second finger. Danny groaned in pleasure as his hole was stretched, as he was filled. He loved Steve’s hands. Strong, agile, capable of infinite gentleness, and his fingers, his long, elegant, _talented_ fingers were things of beauty. Especially when they were working their way inside of him, screwing into him before sliding apart as they withdrew, stretching and teasing him in equal measure.

And all the while Danny was falling apart under touch he was so slow, so controlled. Danny could see how dark Steve’s cock was, so hard it rested up against those perfect abs, pulsing with every beat of Steve’s heart, giving away the racing nature of it. Yet still Danny could not rush the pace, no matter how he tried by clenching down on Steve’s fingers and arching into his touch with a long drawn out moan, all normally guaranteed to enflame Steve.

“I hate you,” Danny grumbled. 

“Love you too, Danno.”

Danny scowled, and Steve leaned forward for a kiss but he was smiling too much and it was more of a pressing of stretched lips and clacking teeth than it was a kiss.

So rarely did he play with his ass when he was alone he was glad, for all his bravado, that Steve was being careful with him. No matter how much he ached to be filled when Steve was away, it only ever made him feel emptier, more alone than ever. The one time he’d gotten drunk with his sister, his _baby_ sister, he’d been presented with a _‘Clone – A – Willy’_ set for Christmas so he could ‘ _keep the best part of Steve’_ while his lover was deployed. He was still in therapy after opening that particular present in front of his eighty-five year old, apparently unshockable, grandmother, and he certainly had never told Steve about it. Too embarrassed to throw the thing out because knowing his luck the trash collectors would find it, the package sat unopened buried in a box of Halloween decorations in the basement. 

Sometimes though…sometimes when it’d been months, and he worried he couldn’t go another day without the touch of his lover he’d entertained thoughts of using the damn thing so that at least he had something of Steve’s with him.

Steve shifted his stance to allow his cock to ride the soft skin of Danny’s inner thigh, rocking against him, matching the rhythm of Danny’s hips, swallowing the groans and grunts that escaped the blonde’s mouth.

Steve reached up to grab Danny’s neck, tugging at him to make him sit up so he could be kissed, mouths meeting hot and wet, the awkward angle not enough to deter either man. Danny grunted into the kiss as he released his hold on the sink with one hand and grasped Steve’s cock, guiding the tip to his hole, brushing the head against him and Steve’s fingers again and again, teasing them both.

“Danny, gotta use the-”

“I know,” Danny kissed him to shut him up as he released his hold and felt around at his side for the foil square. Tearing it open with his teeth, hearing the echo of Mrs Fairns from sex-ed warning the class to never do that lest they risk tearing the latex, he pressed the sheath over the head of Steve’s cock, quickly letting go of the counter with his other hand to roll it into place, careful to keep his movements small, abs flexing hard to hold him in place.

“This is stupid,” he mumbled into Steve’s mouth. “So stupid. I’m gonna fall and die.”

“Never let that happen, babe.”

“Sure.”

Trusting Steve’s word, but not totally stupid, as soon as the condom was secure, he gestured for the lube. He watched as some of the liquid was pumped out onto his fingers before he slowly slicked up the condom with it, spending maybe a little longer than necessary making sure Steve was well-slicked.

“What? It’s been a while, babe,” he said when Steve cocked a brow at him, the look far less stern than the SEAL had no doubt hoped when his eyelashes fluttered in pleasure when Danny gave him a little squeeze.

“C’mon, Danno, I think I’m ready.” Steve’s tone was strained.

“Oh, I’d say so.” Taking pity, and not at all because he was getting desperate himself, Danny repeated his earlier action, guiding Steve’s dick to his entrance, but this time he bore down onto it, and Steve’s hip pressed forward. 

Danny cried out as Steve pushed into him, using the strength of his legs where they were wrapped around Steve’s thighs to try and pull Steve in faster despite the sharp sting of the penetration. But Steve’s hands shifted to his hips and held him firm, holding him still, not letting him rush the pace, regardless of how badly they both wanted it.

“Wait, wait, easy.”

Danny could feel how Steve’ body was trembling, could see how the muscles of his abs were twitching and jerking as he held himself back, supressing his own desires to take his lover hard and fast, to just bury himself within Danny until they couldn’t tell their own bodies apart.

“You? Patient?” Danny panted, contrary despite knowing Steve was right. It had been a year since the last time he’d done this, after all. He wiped the excess slick off his hand onto his thigh and grabbed the countertop again.

“Never wanna hurt you.”

Taking a deep breath, Danny forced himself to relax, for his body to remember how to open up to Steve again, to welcome the intrusion of his cock, luxuriating in the sting of the stretch, the burn of the slide as Steve entered him, slow but unrelenting until his hips came to rest against Danny’s, balls pressing against his ass.

“You okay?” He asked, thumb sliding back and forth along Danny’s cheekbone, watching entranced as blond lashes fluttered against his fingernail.  
  
“Gimme…gimme just a sec.” 

Leaning in, Steve kissed along Danny’s shoulder and neck, distracting himself, holding himself still while murmuring words against Danny’s skin, words that were only half in English. Much as he’d tried to resist, Danny _had_ picked up some basic Hawaiian and Pidgin, but Steve was also fluent in Mandarin and Pashto, and conversational in Japanese and Korean.

But Danny didn’t have to understand the words to know what he was being told.

“I love you, too.” He turned his head to smudge a kiss along Steve’s sweaty hairline. “Love you more if you _moved._ ” If he were honest he’s not completely ready, the stretch still more pain than pleasurable burn, but that’s how he wants it. He wants to _feel_ Steve’s possession even when he leaves again. He’d softened as Steve had pushed inside him, but his balls were pulled up so tight they ached every time he clenched involuntarily down on the cock holding him so open. A thin sheen of sweat had broken out over his skin and if he weren’t so desperate to get off, he’d have been worried about slipping right off the counter.

Being an asshole, Steve just reared his head back and grinned, keeping his hips flush to Danny’s. Instead, his right hand left its hold on Danny’s hip and moved to his cock, fondling over the full balls and stroking the shaft back to full hardness with a tight fist.

Despite his frustration at being denied, Danny lost himself in the sensation. There was a joy in that connection, in feeling so stuffed full of Steve, in the safety of his hold. With Steve no longer so focused on holding him still, Danny risked gentle thrusts of his hips, becoming braver in his movements when he didn’t instantly fall off the sink to his doom. He shuttled his cock through Steve’s grip, looking down to watch the reddened head appear and disappear from Steve’s fingers as he shifted back onto Steve’s cock, the movement shallow, his position still precarious.

“Do not make me shoot you, Steven.”

“You want something?” For all he was trying to sound unaffected, Danny could hear the strain as Steve tried to give Danny as much time to adjust to the sensation as he could, but for all that made Danny’s heart clench with fondness, it wasn’t what the detective wanted. Wrapping one hand around Steve’s neck, he pulled his lover down to his level, dragging his lips along that sharp jawline until he reached Steve’s ear.

“Fuck me, _Commander_.” It was no less of an order for all it was barely more than a whisper.

As though he’d only been waiting for the command, Steve drew his hips back until only the head of his cock remained inside Danny before punching back inside, swallowing the sob that escaped Danny’s throat before he could stop it, the detective’s head falling back against the mirror with a thud, both hands gripping the counter edge for dear life as Steve began to ride him the way they both wanted.

Shifting his angle just a little, Steve withdrew again, grinning victoriously when the next thrust had Danny crying out as his cockhead nudged the blond’s prostate…and again…and again…and again, the SEAL moving faster and harder with each driving movement.

Danny’s hips moved of their own volition, responding instinctively to Steve’s thrusts, his ass sliding against the smooth surface of the sink. Danny was eager to match Steve’s intensity, teetering on the edge of the sink but uncaring of the danger. It all felt too good to stop, as their hips met again and again, thrust after thrust. 

Steve kissed away the gasps and mewls that spilled forth from Danny’s lips as though it was his mission in life to do nothing more than bring Danny pleasure for the rest of his days. He drank in the sounds, and hoarded them away to take out in all the dark and lonely nights that stretched in his future.

Steve was grunting with each thrust and Danny focused on his face, his heart racing at the sight; the SEAL’s face was twisted in ecstasy, mouth slack, eye’s greedily raking over Danny’s face even as he blinked away the sweat that dripped from his brow.

Trusting Steve to hold him up, Danny released his legs from around Steve’s and gingerly drew them up onto the sink beside his hands, his right knee twinging angrily at the pretzel treatment but the change in angle made it oh-so worth it. 

His hands slid on the sink, palms sweaty, and he was desperate to touch himself, but he didn’t dare risk taking his hands from the counter. But fuck, he was throbbing and Steve was fucking him so good he was mortified to find that his climax was hurtling towards him embarrassingly fast after so long without Steve inside him. Wanting to take Steve with him, he clamped down around Steve’s cock.

Danny grunted, eyes slamming shut on a particularly hard thrust as it all became too much, all too good, too _Steve_ , and he babbled nonsense while his prostate was nailed again and again. He begged Steve for _‘more, harder, faster please_ _please, please, please, please…’_ and then his whole body was on fire and he was coming. Pinpricks of light exploded behind his eyes as he came, the world going white and fuzzy at the edges while he spilled over his belly and thighs. It felt like it wouldn’t stop, his cock jerking again and again as his balls drained. He clutched at Steve’s arms as wave after wave of pleasure racked through him, pulling him in close and nipping at Steve’s sharp jaw.

The clenching of his muscles brought Steve to his own climax with a wordless groan, lips dragging along Danny’s hairline, tasting the well-earned sweat. He pressed kiss after kiss into Danny’s hair as his hip pumped and stuttered into his lover as he emptied himself into the condom. They stayed like that, breathing heavy as their hearts slowed. Danny’s body ached but he didn’t let Steve go; he loved the weight of him pressing him back and down into the counter. He nuzzled against Steve’s temple as he got his breathing under control, mumbling sappy nonsense into overheated skin. Maybe if he smudged the words into Steve’s skin often enough, they’d sink in, like a tattoo before travelling deeper, into his blood, to his heart. A different kind of armour against a harsh world.

When he could no longer ignore either the pain radiating from his knee or his precarious position, Danny let his leg straighten out with a wince, the movement dislodging Steve’s softening cock, to both of their disappointment. 

He’d forgotten how bereft he felt when Steve withdrew after sex, how incredible it felt to have his lover buried inside him, filling him, loving him and how empty he felt when he was gone, his hole twitching and spasming at the loss. Danny felt an embarrassing burn prickle behind his eyes, but before tears could fall, Steve was there, wrapping him close, kissing him again and again and again and again. “Love you,” he mumbled against Danny’s mouth. “Love you so much.”

“Love you too, babe.” 

Danny felt wrung out and jubilant as Steve gently helped him drop his other leg down, the blond unable to bite back a groan at the sharp cramping that knotted his hamstring. 

“Getting to be a cranky old man, Danno.” Massaging Danny’s thighs, Steve helped the detective shift into a more secure position on the countertop, bending to drop a kiss against aching knees.

“Eleven months, babe. I am only eleven months older than you.”

“Notice you didn’t argue about cranky.”

“You wanna see cranky?”  
  
“Every day for the rest of my life.” Steve shot a bright grin at his lover, getting his hands smacked away from where they had gone from easing tight quads to fondling over-sensitive balls.

“Get me a towel, you animal,” Danny mumbled against his lips when Steve began to massage Danny’s come into the skin of his own chest and abs with every sign of enjoyment. “You’re gonna shower, right?” He asked, even if the thought of Steve returning to the Enterprise reeking of Danny coaxed a tired twitch from his cock. The man _was_ right, after all: he _did_ love making Steve filthy.

Sex happy, Steve complied without comment, removing the soiled condom and throwing it into the trash, before handing Danny a towel. He shivered as Danny used it, cool with the water the detective had dampened it with, to clean them both off before tossing it into the shower where it landed with a plop.

Checking his watch, Steve helped Danny off the sink and ushered him out of the bathroom.

“Age before beauty.”

“How pretty you gonna be when I break your nose?"

“You would never,” Steve denied as he set the alarm, and bullied Danny under the covers, tangling their limbs and cradling him close. They drifted off to sleep kissing and caressing whatever they could reach.

*

Steve was rummaging through the bodega bag when Danny woke from his doze, and he watched as the SEAL, uncaring about his nudity, rifling through the different bandages until deciding upon one and heading toward the bathroom with it, leaving the discarded ones in a heap on the floor.

Clearly all the house-training Danny had implemented had gone to waste while his lover had been deployed. He threw back the blankets and hauled himself out of bed onto knees that still hadn’t forgiven him for earlier.

“I’ll help.”

A part of Danny had hoped to make his lover jump, but most of him was resigned to the fact he’d never sneak up on Steve. Didn’t stop him trying though.

“Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I know.” Steve had planned to slip out and meet up with Freddie next door before heading back to the ship. He hadn’t missed the circles under Danny’s eyes and had wanted him to catch up on sleep; he knew how hard the last few days of his absences before they were reunited were on the detective and suspected, quite correctly, that Danny hadn’t slept properly in the previous week. 

Blinking against the harsh light when Steve flicked the switch, Danny crossed to the sink. From the wet hand towel slung over the shower rail, Steve had cleaned himself up as much as he could without showering which Danny had been advised he not do for at least a day. Swiftly washing his hands, he turned, directing Steve to stand in front of the mirror, tugging on his shoulders to angle him this way and that until he was convinced he had the best lighting to see what he was doing.

“Gimme.”

Passing back the gloves, wipes, ointment, and bandage, Steve gripped the sink, one hand tracing over where Danny had, less than an hour previous been perched, imagining it to still be warm from his skin. He watched Danny in the mirror; face a little wrinkled from the pillow and hair askew from sleep and Steve’s hands both, he was still the most gorgeous thing Steve had ever laid eyes on and after so long without him, it seemed cruel to have to leave him again.

Even for only a few hours.

“Creeper.”

“Hmmm-hmmm.”

“You can stop staring at me any time.”

“Here’s the thing though, I don’t wanna.”

The first smear of the wipe had Steve flinching a little - it was cold and it stung but he knew better than to complain; sympathy would be in short supply.

“Heh, short,” he snickered to himself.

Danny glanced up, eyes narrow before he focused back on his task without bothering to ask what his lover was on about.

“You’re a menace.”

“Am not.”

“And a child. The fact you’re allowed to carry a gun is a terrifying proposition.”

“More than one.”

“So help me, Steve, if you’re making a _‘it’s a gun in my pocket’_ joke-”

“Not in my pocket.”

“Four thousand nine hundred and forty-eight.”

“Huh?”

“That’s how many miles I flew for this. In coach.”

“What are bitching about? Coach has plenty of leg room for you.”

Danny pinched the delicate skin at the back of Steve’s knee and twisted.

“Hey!”

“Coach, _Steven._ Middle seat. Next to a three hundred pound man named Bubba.”

“Any good movies?”

“Any good… _any good movies?!_ Here’s an interesting fact that you clearly are not aware of; there is _no_ good movie on any plane. They’re edited to beyond PG and the kid in the seat behind you is screaming and kicking the back of your chair the whole time and-”

“You blaming that on me, too?”

If looks could kill, Steve would have been a shrivelled husk on the floor.

“How you could have just said that with a straight face, I will never know.”

“What did I do?”

“Would I be in that plane if it wasn’t for you?”

That his words instantly shut the SEAL up, was proof enough to Danny that he had won and he grinned triumphantly.

Seeing no other way about it, and expecting more schoolboy sniggering from Steve, Danny carefully lowered himself to his knees, instantly regretting not putting a towel down. He traced his fingers around the edge of the reddened skin, keeping well away from the new ink, unsure how quite to proceed. Above him, he heard Steve swallow, hard, and a glance to the mirror showed the intent gaze of his lover as he watched Danny.

“Stop it.”

“Not doin’ anything.”

“We do not have time for any of what you’re thinking about.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking about.”

Danny cocked an eyebrow and jerked his chin towards where, just visible in the mirror, Steve’s cock was valiantly rising to the occasion, pulsing faintly with the beat of Steve’s heart.

“It’s not _my_ fault you’re on your knees and too hot for your own good.”

“It _is_ your fault. It is entirely your drunken self’s fault that I am here, kneeling on tile, about to smear this nasty smelling, not at all cheap thank you very much, cream all over this monstrosity of a tattoo. That is absolutely your fault, you animal.”

He’d just smeared a thin layer of the antiseptic lotion across the stark ink, and was reaching for the bandage when Steve spoke up again.

“It’s not a monstrosity.”

“You seen this thing? Your buddies are never gonna shut up about it.” And if Danny gave them some suggestions on comments, that was between him and the birds. Most of the other SEALs from Steve’s team had some artwork themselves, far too many of them opting for either the Budweiser or Frogman because they were walking clichés, but there were enough other drunken mistakes, of varying degrees of quality, inked onto asses and biceps (and one penis which Danny so dearly wished he didn’t know) to while away an evening talking shit about. “What on God’s green Earth inspired you to get the damn-”

“It's a 'W'.”

That…that wasn’t what Danny had expected.

“What?”

“The design,” Steve raised a hand from where it was still splayed across where Danny had sat and awkwardly waved at his lower back. “It’s a W.”

Danny bit back on his automatic response of ‘ _in what world does this shit looks like a W? Are you blind?’_ and instead, hearing an unfamiliar vulnerability colouring his lover’s pronouncement, rocked back on his heels and studied the tattoo. 

He hadn’t really looked at it much; in the parlour he’d been focused on Steve and ignoring the way the guy was manhandling Steve’s ass far more than necessary in his opinion given the artwork wasn’t on either cheek, and then earlier there’d been all the sex.

He defied _anyone_ to see Steve McGarrett naked and _not_ get a little off track.

The design was perfectly symmetrical, the channel of Steve’s spine providing the mid-point. He studied the sharp lines that arched up towards either hip, the middle that arrowed down to _just_ above Steve’s crack, but did not reach up a high as the hip points. Using his finger he traced, in the air above the ink, a W from Steve’s left hip, down to his crack and up to his right. He supposed, with a little imagination, he could see it.

Sort of. 

But just the thought that his lover had tattooed a rough approximation of his name had his heart racing a little more than he was willing to admit. To think that Steve would walk around all day, every day _forever_ bearing Danny’s mark was a little too much to process while kneeling on the floor in a motel in Brooklyn in the middle of the night.

So instead he reached for the bag and rummaged for a bandage.

"If you say so, babe. Hey!”

Steve span around, dislodging the hands that had been about to carefully place a bandage over the inflamed skin. Reaching down he tugged Danny to his feet, plucking the gauze from his hands and throwing it into the sink. He clasped both sides of Danny’s face, forcing the detective to look away from something he’d just spent good money on and was now useless much to his irritation, and up to him.

The look in Steve’s eyes quelled the retort that Danny had _just_ been about to make. The SEAL’s eyes were blazing, but not with lust. Instead a desperate devotion radiated from Steve’s gaze, an earnest desire to be heard.

So, Danny listened.

"I do say so.” Steve leaned forward, pressing their foreheads together for a breath, centring himself before pulling back. “ _I do._ ”

Steve's gaze was intent, heavy with something unspoken, something that _couldn’t_ be spoken, and Danny's chest clenched tight, breath a thing of the past, feeling exposed under his piercing gaze. His heart was pounding so hard he was sure Steve had to be able to hear it.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise; they’d been together for the better part of a decade, despite the numerous obstacles and regulations in their way. Regardless of just how difficult the extended absences and hiding had been, despite the harsh words and many fights, neither had ever so much as hinted as to wanting out, to pursue an easier path.

No matter how hard being together was, it was so much better than being apart, so Steve’s declaration shouldn’t have come as a shock. Yet somehow, _somehow,_ Danny still found himself slack-jawed and dumb.

Right up until Steve’s expression began to close off. The light in his eyes dimmed, the grin that had lifted the corner of his lips began to fall, his hands slipping away from Danny’s face. And Danny could not have that. Sniper-fast he moved, hands coming up to wrap around Steve’s wrists, feeling the flex of muscle and tendon beneath his touch.

"You do, huh?" Danny asked with his own smile, bright and wide and so happy it _hurt._ He laughed and kissed Steve quickly, because he could, because it was exhilarating, because he couldn’t contain how he was feeling.

The tension, the unfamiliar fear on Steve’s face morphed into something else, into _joy._ Into a pride that he had been heard and understood, that they were each other’s now and still and forever. He pressed his lips to Danny’s but this kiss was so unlike all that had come before that night. It wasn’t rough and calloused fingers tugging through hair, or the needy slick of tongue on tongue. 

It was delicate, soft, a benediction. 

They kissed as though they’d die if they stopped, as thoughif they had to remove their hands or their lips from the other’s skin they’d cease to exist.

Perhaps they would.

Danny slipped his right hand up and over Steve’s guiding it down away from his cheek, skimming the arch of his neck and down the chain of the tags that lay across Danny’s chest, Steve’s own mark upon Danny. He closed their hands around the metal and pressed them over his pounding heart. Looking into Steve’s eyes, not bothering to blink away the moisture he knew glistened there, Danny whispered,

"I do." 

And wasn't that a hell of a thing.

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in 2010, Freddie is alive (and this is my damn AU and he will stay that way because he was cute AF) so DADT is still in effect.
> 
> The bone frog tattoo has meaning as honouring a fallen teammate, so if Steve had died on the mission, Freddie might have gotten it in remembrance. The Budweiser is the most common term for the Trident insignia, for obvious reasons.
> 
> The Navy has some of the most lenient regulations for tattoos in the military – only scalp, face and head are off-limits, though neck tattoos can only be smaller than an inch and, like Highlander, there can only be one.
> 
> A frog hog is a woman whose primary goal is to sleep with Navy SEALs. Though I suppose since DADT was repealed, it could be used to describe a man too, but we all know pejoratives of a sexual nature are almost always aimed at women.
> 
> I spent way too much time studying AOL's original back tattoo for this. I found that tattoo ugly and cliche as sin but very useful from a fic standpoint. use your imagination a little and you can see a W. honest.


End file.
